Practice Areas

One Is Not Enough for Patent Infringement Under 35 U.S.C. §271(f)(1)

In Life Technologies v. Promega Corporation, the U.S. Supreme Court addressed whether supplying a single component from the United States of a multicomponent invention assembled abroad constitutes patent infringement under 35 U.S.C. §271(f)(1). Under §271(f)(1), a party can be liable for patent infringement if it supplies from the United States “all or a substantial portion of the components of a patented invention.” Interpreting this statute in Promega, the Court determined that supplying one component is not enough to constitute infringement of a multicomponent invention because a single component is not “a substantial portion” within the meaning of this statute.

In this case, Promega was the exclusive licensee of the Tautz patent, which claims a toolkit for genetic testing that can be used in law enforcement as well as in clinical and research work. Promega sublicensed the Tautz patent to Life Technologies. Under the sublicense, Life Technologies’ patent rights were limited to manufacturing and selling kits for use in certain law enforcement fields. Life Technologies was not given a license to manufacture or sell kits for use in clinical or research work.

The patented kit consists of five components. Life Technologies manufactured four of the five components in the United Kingdom. It manufactured the fifth component, an enzyme called Taq polymerase, in the United States and shipped it to the United Kingdom where it was combined with the other four components to form the kit.

This dispute arose when Promega alleged that Life Technologies began selling these kits in the clinical and research markets, which was outside the scope of Life Technologies’ license. As a result, Promega sued Life Technologies alleging patent infringement under §271(f)(1), which prohibits the supply from the United States of “all or a substantial portion of the components of a patented invention” for combination abroad.

The jury found that Life Technologies had infringed the patent, but the district court granted judgment as a matter of law for Life Technologies, holding that §271(f)(1)’s phrase “all or a substantial portion” did not encompass the supply of a single component of a multicomponent invention. The Federal Circuit reversed finding that a single important component could constitute a “substantial portion” of the components of an invention and that the Taq polymerase met that standard. The Supreme Court, however, reversed the Federal Circuit holding that the supply of a single component of a multicomponent invention assembled abroad does not constitute patent infringement under §271(f)(1) because a single component of a multicomponent invention cannot be a “substantial portion.” The Court found that the importance of the single component is irrelevant.

In reaching its conclusion the Supreme Court considered 1) whether the term “substantial portion” refers to a qualitative or quantitative measure, 2) whether a single component can ever constitute a “substantial portion,” and 3) whether the history of §271(f) supports the Court’s conclusion.

The Court first had to determine whether “substantial portion” refers to a qualitative or quantitative measure. The Court acknowledged that the term “substantial” in isolation is ambiguous because in some instances it “might refer to an important portion” whereas in other instances it might refer “to a large portion.” Promega argued that a quantitative approach would be too narrow and invited the Court to adopt a “‘case-specific approach’ that would require a factfinder to decipher whether the components at issue are ‘a substantial portion’ under either a qualitative or quantitative test.” The Court, however, declined to adopt Promega’s approach noting that it would compound the ambiguity rather than resolve it. Instead, the Court looked to the text of the statute, including the language surrounding the word “substantial,” for clarification. The Court pointed out that the surrounding words “‘all’ and ‘portion’ convey a quantitative meaning” rather than relative importance. Further, the phrase “substantial portion” is modified by the phrase “of the components of a patented invention,” which according to the Court would be an unnecessary phrase if the intent had been a qualitative rather than quantitative meaning. Therefore, in the context of this statute, the Court determined that the term “substantial portion” should be interpreted as a quantitative measure.

Applying the quantitative measure, the Court next had to determine, as a matter of law, whether a single component can be “a substantial portion” of a multicomponent invention. Looking again to the text of the statute, the Court noted that §271(f)(1) “consistently refers to ‘components’ in the plural.” For example, the Court explained that additional language in §271(f)(1) shows the statute “is targeted toward the supply of all or a substantial portion ‘of the components,’ where ‘such components’ are uncombined, in a manner that actively induces the combination of ‘such components’ outside of the United States.”

The Court further noted that the overall “structure of §271(f) reinforces this reading.” Section §271(f)(2), the companion provision to §271(f)(1), prohibits supplying from the United States “any component of a patented invention that is especially made or especially adapted for use in the invention.” The Court noted that the two provisions work in tandem under the Court’s interpretation because a party would be liable under §271(f)(1) for supplying more than one component whereas a party would be liable under §271(f)(2) for providing a single component if it was especially made or adapted for use in the invention. Therefore, the Court found that only supplying a single component from the United States of a multicomponent invention cannot infringe under §271(f)(1).

Finally, the Court stated that “[t]he history of §271(f) bolsters” its conclusion. Congress enacted 35 U.S.C. §271(f) in response to the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in Deepsouth Packing Co. v. Laitram Corp. Under the law applicable in Deepsouth, the Court determined that making or using a patented product outside of the United States did not constitute patent infringement. But with the subsequent enactment of §271(f), Congress expanded patent protection to cover certain instances where components of a patented invention are made in the United States but assembled in another country. The Court found that its ruling in Promega “comports with Congress’ intent” because “[a] supplier may be liable under §271(f)(1) for supplying from the United States all or a substantial portion of the components (plural) of the invention, even when the components are combined abroad” and liable under §271(f)(2) for supplying even a single component “if it is especially made or especially adapted for use in the invention.” The Court was persuaded that when “all components but a single commodity [rather than especially made or adapted] article are supplied from abroad, this activity is outside the scope of the statute.”

The Court expressly declined to decide “how close to ‘all’ of the components ‘a substantial portion’ must be” but rather held “only that one component does not constitute ‘all or a substantial portion’ of a multicomponent invention under §271(f)(1).” Thus the Court left several questions open. For example, how do you determine how many components are in a claimed invention? And once you determine the number of components, how many must be supplied from the United States to constitute infringement under §271(f)(1)? Is it a percentage of the total number of components? Will courts look to the relative importance of the various components or will it be purely a numbers-based analysis? What if the invention only has two components? In that instance, are the terms “all” and “a substantial portion” synonymous? The only certainty is that these unanswered questions will give rise to future litigation disputes.